La Maison Brasiliana – Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil

Our bus to Iguazu arrived in Argentina, so naturally I started my search for places to stay in Argentina. Very quickly I realized that not only were things expensive (which wasn’t surprising to me), they were also not nearly as nice as staying just over the border in Brazil. When our bus arrived in Argentina I breathed a sigh of relief that we were staying in Brazil as Puerto Iguazu, the Argentinean town looked a little run down.

I used Booking.com as I often do to find places to stay. When I stumbled upon La Maison Brasiliana I knew that was where we needed to stay. It had great reviews, the room looked cute and it was under budget.

Getting to La Maison Brasiliana

Our bus dropped us off in Puerto Iguazu which was in Argentina – this meant that we had to cross over the border to get to our guesthouse. We caught a 20 peso or $1.50 bus to the Brazilian border. The bus waited for us to get stamped out of Argentina but there was quite a line for customs in Brazil. Our driver gave us a ticket which allowed us to catch the next bus from the border to the town.

When we arrived in Brazil we didn’t really have any options but to walk to the guesthouse as we had not yet gotten any Brazilian money. While normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, it was about 90 degrees with 90% humidity. We walked about 10 minutes to our hostel which seemed like an eternity. When we arrived, we were super sweaty and dying to take a shower. The owners introduced themselves, gave us a glass of cold water and lead us up to our room.

Room #1 at La Maison Brasiliana

Our room was a little removed from the other rooms in the guesthouse which was nice since we had some privacy and it was quiet. There was a little seating area just outside of our room which was cute but we never used it since the seating area did not have any air conditioning.

I had 2 initial thoughts when we saw our room for the first time:

The room was immaculately clean

I loved how the room had been decorated

There were 2 beds in our room – a full size and a twin bed. The full size bed had a very firm mattress which isn’t my preference. Surprisingly, the firm bed did not bother Andy nor I during our 4 nights that we slept on it.

When I was booking our room, there was a more expensive option for a room with a balcony. While I considered it, I knew that we needed to keep our expenses as low as possible, so opted for a standard room insead. After opening up the windows of our room, we realized that we had been upgraded to the balcony room for the standard room price.

Each day when we were out exploring the city our room was cleaned. It was a nice touch and something that we have come to appreciate greatly, especially after we have had so many hostels which don’t service our room at all.

Bathroom

Similar to the rest of the room, the bathroom was immaculately clean, just a little bit dated. You could tell that the owners tried to modernize it within a budget as there was a new vanity and medicine cabinet.

The shower was a suicide shower, something that we haven’t had in a while. We didn’t mind it one bit as we were happy to always have hot water when we showered since there are few things worse than taking a cold shower.

When our room was serviced after the second night, our towels were replaced. This was another nice perk as we are used to having the same towels wherever we stay for the duration of our stay.

La Maison Brasiliana – Amenities

Breakfast

The breakfast was really good – there were always 2 kinds of fresh juice, homemade cake, fresh fruit, rolls, an egg bake and more.

Andy and I were hesitant to try the bundt cake as we have been burned by South American “desserts” too many times but we were excited that the cake was not only moist, it was sweet as well.

My favorite part of the breakfast every morning was the fruit. I absolutely love fruit but hate cutting it up, especially mangos. Every morning I got to enjoy mangoes that were cut into slices with the skin removed. They were perfectly ripe and tasted delicious.

Air Conditioning

With the heat and humidity of Foz do Iguaçu, AC was a requirement. Our AC worked very well at cooling us down after we were out in the heat.

One thing that we couldn’t forget was to turn off the AC when we left the guesthouse. In order to keep electric bills low, there was a 40R or $9.75 fee if you left the AC on when you left the room. While it would have been nice to come back to a cool room, the AC cooled the room down quite quickly so it was never an issue.

Kitchen

We had access to a kitchen and fridge which was a great perk since there was a pretty large grocery store not too far from the apartment. One night we decided to save some money and cook up dinner instead of dining out.

Embarrassingly, we accidently started to use the owner’s kitchen at first before realizing that there was a guest kitchen in the outdoor area.

Great Owners

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, owners can make a stay either average or amazing. Our hosts were great, doing everything that they could to make our stay as comfortable as possible. Even though they didn’t speak the best English, they did speak English which was a huge benefit to us. Whenever we had any questions about how to get somewhere, they pulled out the map and made sure that we knew exactly where we needed to go.

It felt like we were part of the family since we also interacted with the owner’s son Luca and their dog Marley. Even though Andy isn’t much of a dog person, he absolutely adored Marley who was super sweet, didn’t make much noise and was extremely obedient.

Transit to bus terminal

We took a bus to get to the bus terminal to buy our bus tickets to Rio de Janiero. While it was cheap, it took forever and the bus did not run that frequently. We made a decision together that we would have the owners take us to the bus terminal for 20R or $5. The last thing that we wanted before a 24 hour bus ride was to arrive sweaty.

The day we left, the owners had shut down the guest house and were headed to their parent’s house. We hopped in the car with the entire family, including their dog Marley, to catch a ride to the bus terminal. It reminded us of our B&B in Puerto Varas, Chile where we rode to the airport with the family that owned the B&B.

When we said goodbye it wasn’t a quick “bye”, we hugged and they told us to come back to see them again. It felt good to have formed a sort of relationship with the family during our time there.

Location

While the location wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t bad either. We were a few blocks off the main road in a local, residential area which had some random buildings that we had to walk by in order to get to the hotel. That being said, we were also 3 blocks away from the major bus line that took us to Argentina and less than 10 minutes from the local bus terminal where we could catch a bus anywhere we needed to go.

Final Thoughts

We had a great time at La Maison Brasiliana and would absolutely stay here again if we return to Foz do Iguaçu. Our room was clean, the owners were fabulous, the breakfast was delicious and the price extremely fair.

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About the Author

Lynn

Bitten by the travel bug during a semester abroad in college, Lynn was able to travel around much of Europe on a shoestring budget. Her travel motto is "If I haven't been there yet, it's probably on my list". When she isn't daydreaming about her next trip, you can find her cooking in the kitchen, reading blogs on how to travel the world on points or spending time with her fluffy cat Gingerbread.

About Us

We are a husband & wife duo who just recently returned from an 8 month trip traveling around the world. During our trip we made stops in Central & South America, Africa, and finally Eastern Europe.

When we returned to the U.S. we decided to road trip south and look for some place a little warmer to live than our previous home in Chicago. On our road trip we made a stop in Asheville, NC and fell in love with the city.

We decided to take another risk & move to Asheville to start the next phase in our lives!More about us »

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